On 2011-02-07, at 20:43 , Manuel Bärenz wrote:
In C++, the the approach to the namespace problem is having different namespaces that should not contain different definitions of the same name. Members of a namespace can be accessed explicitly by e.g. calling "std::cout<< etc." or "using namespace std; cout<< etc."
I understand Pythons approach to be "objects can be used as namespaces and their attributes are the names they contain". I find this a very beautiful way of solving the issue, but it has a downside, in my opinion, because it lacks the "using" directive from C++.
If the object is a module, we can of course do "from mymodule import spam, eggs". Or `from mymodule import *` though that's not exactly recommended.
On the other hand, since when can `using` be used on anything but a C++ namespace (which as far as I know is a well-defined entity, not an arbitrary object, and quite similar to a Python module though not identical)?
But if it is not a module, this does not work.
Consider for example:
class Spam(object): def frobnicate(self): self.eggs = self.buy_eggs() self.scrambled = self.scramble(self.eggs) return self.scrambled> 42
This could be easier to implement and read if we had something like:
class Spam(object): def frobnicate(self): using self: eggs = buy_eggs() scrambled = scramble(eggs) return scrambled> 42
Of course this opens a lot of conceptual questions like how should this using block behave if self doesn't have an attribute called "eggs", but I think it is worth considering.
My 2 cents: Javascript has this "feature" (with). It's utterly terrible, and mainly a very good way to shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly. I especially find the assertion that:
This could be easier to […] read
Extremely debatable: in my experience of that feature in Javascript, it makes code much harder to understand and reason about.